His Sherlock Problem
by bellgirl221b
Summary: A bit of your average Post-Reichenbach. A breif story in which John Watson has turned down all of his friends' offers for help in coping with the death of his best friend. So when he meets a peculiar man at the pub, why does he take the stranger's advice? And why does this stranger think that John is missing the fact that there is something very strange about Sherlock's suicide?


**So this doesn't exactly have to be a crossover... But I put it here anyway because Wholock makes me happy. This is what happens when someone with a lot of great story ideas that never get finished finally decides to see one through to the end no matter what. If you see any mistakes please let me know! **

**Disclaimer: The usual. You know the drill. I do not own Sherlock or Doctor Who or the OC of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that's in here. However, the character Liam is my own creation, origionating from somewhere in the back of my brain.**

**Rated T just to be safe but I doubt it even needs that.**

**Now Enjoy!**

**~BG~**

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_"Why are you saying this?"_

_"It's a trick. It's just a magic trick…"_

_"Oh, God."_

_"The newspapers were right all along." _

_"Alright, stop this…"_

_"I'm a fake."_

_"Sherlock?"_

_"This phone call, it's my note…"_

_"… No, I'm coming in…"_

_"Goodbye, John."_

_"Sherlock!"_

_BAM!_

John's fist connected rather violently with the countertop in front of him. Ignoring the slightly startled looks coming from the other occupants of the pub, the soldier shook his head rapidly in a desperate attempt to rid himself of the memory that plagued his mind. It was just a jumbled up mesh that made little sense as far as context currently, thanks to the now-empty glasses sitting behind the bar. He had asked the bartender to leave them there. He liked to keep track of himself, even if he didn't bother stopping when the area behind the counter became a little too crowded. Although the mesh of a memory made little sense at the moment, he knew he wasn't finished. Not until he forgot what he came here to forget.

_"…I created Moriarty. For my own purposes."_

_"Do it? Do what?"_

_"…Look up, I'm on the rooftop."_

Oh no you don't. John snatched up the drink and began downing it almost before it had left the bartender's hand. He was pleasantly surprised at how the distraction temporarily drowned the swirl of phone calls and black coats and bloody sidewalks… No. Not again. John tried to distract his fuzzy mind by attempting to gulp down his whole glass in one go. He failed miserably when he gave an involuntary hiccup halfway through and was forced to put the drink down or choke. John hiccupped, coughed, and then hiccupped again before he finally just laughed at himself.

This. This was good. He didn't need company. Forget what his therapist and ex-friends said. He could handle this on his own, at his own pace. What good was comfort going to do? John could vaguely here a little voice in the back of his mind telling him that it had been a very long time, and the only progress he had made was that from the armchair in his flat to the barstool where he now sat. John shook that little voice out immediately. It was far too witty and sarcastic. It sounded far too much like…

"John?"

The soldier looked up from his drink to see a rather portly man behind the bar a ways away, making his way towards where John sat. Oops. John had been so sure that this was Liam's night off. As a bartender, former Corporal Liam Threshing had recently become a good friend of John's. During the day he would sometimes grab a pint at the pub and talk to Liam about… Well, anything. Everything. It was yet another pleasant distraction of his. They talked about rugby and back when they were young and wild and about their days in the army. Liam had been abroad about the same time as John, and honorably discharged about the same time too, thanks to a little grenade that had gone off a few meters too close. He had a hearing aid now, and was just as spunky as anything, but he didn't argue with the decision of his discharge. Liam often spoke of how he loathed his army days.

It was this man who had eventually talked John out of coming into the pub every night and numbing his pain at the expense of his liver. But, unbeknownst to Liam, John had been back several times when his own mind became too much of a burden, always making sure the former corporal was not working that evening before drinking the rest of the night away. For some reason, John didn't want to disappoint the man.

"What the hell are ya doing?"

John was once again pulled roughly out of his own thoughts. He looked up to see a mop of long ginger hair and hard green eyes looking down at him in disapproval.

"Uh… Drinking?" John suggested. He smiled innocently.

Liam's eyes wandered to the cluster of empty glasses in front of him.

"Is this about…" the man started. John gave him a look that stopped him dead. They didn't talk about that. Ever. It was their unspoken rule, and Liam knew that.

It was because of this reason that John was shocked to hear himself reply, "What other reason would I have to drinking like this?" Disgusted with himself, John raised the glass to his lips again. Maybe the alcohol was loosening his tongue. Ah, well. The more the merrier. And the faster he forgot.

"I thought ya'd stopped this," Liam said in a scolding tone.

"And I thought, as a bartender, you would encourage a situation like this."

"I'm not telling ya this as a bartender, John. I'm telling ya this as your friend."

This made John practically start. He didn't consider Liam his friend. Pleasant acquaintance maybe, but not friend. John felt a bit guilty about it, but he didn't have friends. He could never have friends again, because no one would ever be the same. And no one would ever understand. John found himself staring guiltily into his drink.

"Come on, John," Liam went on. "It's been almost three years…"

"No," said John.

"What?"

"Not even two and a half. Two years, three months, fourteen days."

Liam gazed at John with an insulting amount of pity. "That's too long," he said. "What do ya plan on doin' with the rest of your life, eh? Sittin' on this bloody stool and wallowing in your own misery?"

"What's it to you?" John snapped lazily.

"This is exactly how you were before you… Right after Afghanistan," Liam said. "Just wanderin' aimlessly. Do ya even have a job, John?"

"What do you expect me to do!?" John responded loudly. "Find a job? Settle down with a girl and have a family? Tell me, Liam. Please, enlighten me as to what woman, or even man for that matter, would ever consider so much as dating a guy who couldn't even tell when the man he was living with was a flat-out liar?" John turned around in his chair to face the rest of the pub. "Point out to me, please, one single person in this ruddy pub that wants a guy who was friends with the only man in the world that would murder people and set up a whole act just to make people think he was brilliant! Nobody here cares about the guy who has no money, no purpose, and _no_ _goddamn friends_!"

Liam's face remained unnervingly masked. And John was so enraged and nearly so drunk that he didn't even care how the other man felt. He drained his glass with a few more gulps and considered leaving. He was through talking. When he put his glass down, however, it seemed he didn't need to. Liam was clearing away his empty glasses and, with a mumbled "I'll just leave you to your thoughts," he was gone.

"Another drink there, sir?"

John had been sitting and thinking of nothing in particular for who knows how long when the question came from somewhere above him. He looked up to see the unfamiliar face of what was apparently a new bartender at the pub. Brand new, actually, if the peculiar bowtie beneath the apron and excited gleam in his eye was anything to go on. And, if not, the rumpled look of his un-jacketed shirt, the clear awkwardness at wearing an apron, and the brown hair that appeared expertly styled and combed to the side gave away the fact that this was no doubt his first night on the job.

With a jolt John realized two things; A) he was thinking far far too much like _him_ and B) he was not here to think about _him_. He was here to drink.

With that, he eagerly grabbed the glass that the man before him was holding out.

"Rough day?" the new guy asked.

John pulled the glass from his lips just long enough to respond, "Rough year."

The new guy smiled. There was a surprisingly pleasant silence for some time before the man in the bowtie turned his head away and said. "You don't believe what everyone says do you?"

John looked up at him. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, about your… late friend. You don't believe what everyone says." This time it was a statement. "You don't believe that he was a fake."

John stared at the man before him in annoyance. "What does it matter what I believe?" he asked. "The public thinks he was a filthy liar. They hate him. Well, hated him. Now nobody remembers. Because nobody cares."

The bartender looked at John firmly. "You didn't answer my question."

John wondered vaguely how a man who had appeared so domestic at first could suddenly sound so serious and demanding. It was as though the man felt like John's life hung on this very moment. It was as though he knew several things that John did not.

John swallowed. "I know who my best friend was. And he was far from a fake."

The man in the apron seemed to feel more at ease upon hearing this, but John could now see a touch of pure curiosity in his big brown eyes. "Well then," the man asked. "Why do you think he did what he did?" He wasn't being demanding or prying anymore. Now it all seemed more like a test. John felt as though his grade plummeted downward at this question. He looked at his hands.

"I don't know," he said sadly.

"Yes, you do." The man in the bowtie leaned forward on the countertop. "Think, John Watson. Perhaps later, when you're a bit more sober, but _think_. If anyone can figure out a mystery even close to the way he did, it's the man he lived with."

With as much of a smirk as John was currently capable of, he replied, "He would disagree."

"Oh, I don't think so." The bartender straightened again. He threw a towel over his shoulder and turned as though to leave before spinning back around with a mischievous type of smirk on his face.

"Oh, and John?"

John looked up.

"I think I have an answer to one of the questions you asked Liam earlier," the strange man said.

John replied with a very confused look. "What… question?" he asked.

"Oh, you're a bright man, John. I'm sure you'll recall the question on your own time. But the answer…" The man in the bowtie reached over the bar, took John by his shoulders, and turned him around in his chair. He then proceeded to align his head with John's and point to the other side of the bar. "… Is there."

There, John saw a woman. She was very ordinary looking, but John suddenly found himself attracted that little fact. She was simple, pretty, discreet, and beautifully, wonderfully, perfectly ordinary. The woman was sitting and casually leaning on the bar, her drink in hand. Her blonde hair was pinned back out of her lean face, and her green eyes looked calm and bliss.

John wasn't sure when the strange bartender had taken his hand off his shoulder, but as he stood up, John noticed that the bowtie-wearing man was missing. In fact, he was nowhere to be seen. In all honesty, however, John didn't really care where he had run off to, because he found his feet suddenly moving around the bar and toward the blonde woman without his permission. When they reached their destination, John realized he had no clue what he was doing. Why had the strange man directed him over here? What was he supposed to do? Any second now the woman would notice his presence, would look up and ask why the hell he was staring at her. Desperate for a solution, John glanced at her glass and saw that it was empty.

"Can I, uh, offer to buy you another drink?"

The woman looked up at him, confused at first, until her lovely face broke into a very small smile.

"Well, there's no harm in offering I suppose. Whether I take up on said offer is another matter though." She raised an eyebrow at him.

"Well," said John. "If I were by some chance to give you that offer, would you take up on it?"

The woman's smile grew. "Oh, perhaps. Probably. But you would have to actually offer it, first. And tell me your name."

John found his own face breaking out into a grin. "John," he said. "John Watson. And you are?"

"Mary Morstan," the pretty woman responded.

"Well, Mary Morstan, now that we are properly introduced…" John sat down next to Mary and raised a hand to get the attention of a bartender. "Can I please buy you a drink?"

Mary laughed pleasantly and nodded her consent. Right there, right then, John Watson was the happiest he had been in over two years. And it was simply because everything was… surprisingly okay. He was just sitting at a pub, having some drinks with a pretty girl. And it was okay that _he _was gone, because there was a reason behind it. That was a mystery that John knew he needed to solve. Later, he thought, as Mary smiled at him once again. Later he would consider the strange bartender's words. Later, he would realize that Mary was the answer to his question as to who in this pub would be interested in him. Later, John would come to his senses and see that there was something very wrong with the image of that day, over two years ago, outside St. Bartholomew's Hospital. Later, John would wonder who the peculiar man in the bowtie had even been, and why John had never asked for a name.

But right now, John just wanted this. This peace. Something he had not had since his friend had leapt off that rooftop.

Sherlock, John corrected himself. His name was Sherlock. And it wasn't a crime to think about him. Because he was dead, yes. And John was devastated, yes. But if he couldn't even think of the man's name without becoming a wreck, then he had problems that needed to be sorted out.

And, looking into Mary's eyes and a slightly brighter future simultaneously, John decided it was high time he sorted out his Sherlock problem.

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**Oh, wow! Just look at that little button down there with the speech bubble in it! Look how clickable it looks! (wink wink) Seriously though, this is my first fanfiction and I would absolutely adore feedback, good or bad, and I will do my very best to write you back if you have an account.**

**Also, I didn't PLAN on writing any more chapters to this story, but as of late I realized that it actually woulnd't be that hard. So if I get some support from some of you out there, I just might consider it. Review me any ideas, comments, etc. Especially ideas. I thrive on them.**

**EDIT: I need two more people to tell me they want a sequel! Then it'll happen. Maybe not immediately, but PLEASE!**

**Thanks for reading!**

**~BG~**


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